Mass. man goes from prison to pulpit to authoring

FITCHBURG, Mass. (AP) — He thought the sight alone of the gun would be enough to scare the man away.

He says he never intended to pull the trigger.

In May 1975, Phil Cebula was a 27-year-old mess of a man.

He drank and took whatever drugs he could get his hands on, namely marijuana, pills and hallucinogens.

"I didn't care about anybody but the man in the mirror," says Cebula, now 64.

Cebula was raised in the blue-collar steel mill town of Lackawanna, N.Y., where "every dad worked in the plant and every kid had the same toys."

Shortly after graduating from high school, he found himself in the jungles of Vietnam.

When he returned, he married his high school sweetheart, who later left him, taking their 2-year-old daughter.

"I tried to be a good husband, but I wasn't," Cebula said.

He said his lifestyle eventually led him to anger, and to the night he put that gun in his hand.

A neighbor, whom Cebula says he "just couldn't connect with," wasn't well-liked and had raised some suspicion among other members of the neighborhood. Around the time Cebula's home was broken into and some tools and jewelry were stolen, other neighbors told him they had seen this man peeking into his windows and climbing up on his porch when he wasn't around.

One night, Cebula was at a usual haunt, drinking and smoking marijuana, and friends and other patrons told him this man had been harassing others at the bar.

Cebula decided he'd seek him out at his home at about 3 a.m. They got into a scuffle that lasted only five minutes, Cebula told him to stay out of his life and the places he hangs out at, and to stop dropping his name. He returned to his home and sat down to have a beer with a friend.

Awhile later, the neighbor came swinging at him with a belt with a large metal belt buckle. They exchanged angry words as the man drew nearer, and Cebula grabbed his hunting rifle, in an attempt to scare him. He came much closer than Cebula thought he would.

"My thought at that time was he's going to see me with the gun in my hand, he's going to go back home," he said.

But the man continued forward, swinging the buckle. Cebula pulled the trigger.

"I didn't aim the gun. It was in his direction, but I didn't aim at any part of him," Cebula said. "When I shot the gun, he stopped, he looked at me, and he went back in the house, like nothing happened."

Seeing commotion next door, Cebula tried three separate times to call the house, and each time, he was hung up on. Cebula wasn't sure he'd hit the man. Later that morning, he decided to go to the local police department.

"I said, 'I'm here because I may have shot somebody,'" he said, and was immediately escorted to a back room where he was interrogated by several officers for about three or four hours.

By noontime, Cebula got up to leave and was told he couldn't, because he was under arrest for first-degree murder.

"At that moment, that's when I knew," he said.

Cebula later found out he'd hit him in the shoulder. Medical experts testified that he should not have died from such a wound. He died from blood loss, because he wasn't taken to the hospital in time, Cebula said.

Finding 'The Way'

Cebula was immediately brought to the county jail, where he stayed for 30 days until his parents and other relatives pooled together enough money to pay bail.

It was during this time that Cebula had his first encounter with the Bible, a modern translation titled "The Way," which someone had left in his cell one day while he napped.

Once out, Cebula spent a short time going back to his old ways, but soon learned his good friend Mike and his wife had found religion, and their lives had changed. He noticed something in them that he wanted for himself.

Cebula went to church — Catholic, as he'd been brought up-multiple times a week — but he still didn't have God in his heart, his friends said.

They encouraged him to watch "The 700 Club" with Pat Robertson, and he did. The first guest was a man whose life had been in shambles and said that Jesus had saved him, but Cebula wasn't satisfied with this answer.

He angrily called the number that flashed across the screen, and within a few moments he was spilling his life story to a perfect stranger.

What struck Cebula most was that she simply listened; she didn't judge. She asked him to pray with her.

Cebula was skeptical at first. He repeated back what she said and the words seemed empty, until he came to a realization — his first conviction was that of his sin.

"I was only convicted once in court, but there's a term used in the Bible, a conviction of your lifestyle — a conviction of who you are before a God that doesn't want you to be that way," he said.

As of July 19, 1975, 11:30 p.m., Cebula considered himself born again.

"I can't forget that time, that date," he said. "My life changed."

Over the course of the 10 months before he went to prison, he stopped swearing, didn't drink or use drugs.

"My life changed from the inside out," Cebula said. "The attitude, the anger, the selfishness began bubbling out of me."

'I went in free'

When he went to court, his charges were dropped from first-degree murder to second-degree manslaughter, for which he was ultimately convicted, facing a 10-year sentence in the maximum security Attica Correctional Facility.

On the bus to the prison, another convict handed Cebula a red pill and told him to take it. Cebula struggled with the decision, pretended to take it and clutched it in his hand. He'd found peace and strength through God on the outside, but what about on the inside?

As the bus approached the prison, he decided there was no turning back.

"I said, 'God, if you're going to be with me, you're going to be with me in there too,'" he said. "And I let the pill roll to the back of the bus and I went in free."

In 1976, uttering the word "Attica" was enough to make anyone shudder. Five years earlier, it was the home of the bloodiest prison riot in U.S. history, taking the lives of 43 inmates, guards and other prison personnel.

"The blood stains were still on some of the walls," Cebula recalled, along with the thick tension in the air. He hated every minute of it.

Yet Cebula experienced what he calls incredible favor among everyone he encountered with his new attitude, from guards to administrators to inmates of every ethnic group. Others began to take notice, too.

Corrections officers began sending troublemakers to Cebula so he could counsel them, and he often had the freedom to roam and talk to other inmates when the other cells were locked.

After three years in Attica, Cebula was transferred to a minimum security prison in Albion with the knowledge that he could get out in four years due to his good behavior. He intended to take part in a work release program so he could earn some money for when he was let free, but was offered the opportunity to go to school instead. He took Bible courses at Roberts Wesleyan College until he was released on parole in 1980.

Journey to Fitchburg

Cebula says he spent the next year and a half "floundering around," as he tried to find a church. One day, he received a call from a prison friend who had moved to Woonsocket, R.I., and told him that the prison chaplain who mentored Cebula, Pastor Farrington, was pastoring a United Methodist Church there.

Cebula applied to the Rhode Island parole department and moved, and within a few months met Irene, whom he married six months later.

Four children, five grandchildren and 29 years later, Irene Cebula, 51, says her husband's past never scared her. She had been led to Christ through his best friend, Mike, and had heard about his transformation.

"What happened in the past and him sharing his testimony in church, of what God had done in his life — I had not one ounce of reservation," she said.

Cebula says he felt called to be a pastor while he was in prison, and that feeling remained with him once he was out.

In 1985, he was offered a pastor position at the West Fitchburg United Methodist Church, and when he went to see it and meet the people, he knew the fit was right.

Cebula also became prison chaplain of the former Lancaster Correctional Facility, and found his prison experience was vital to connecting with the men there and helping them to realize they can change, as well.

The first person Cebula and his wife met upon moving to the city was then-8-year-old Lewis Chamberlain, who described Cebula as "the nicest guy in the world."

Chamberlain, now 36, says he didn't find out about Cebula's past until he spoke about it in a sermon a few years later, and he was in disbelief that Cebula could be capable of such a thing.

Cebula was a guiding force during his teen years, and the time he got in trouble and spent a week in the Worcester House of Corrections.

"He was a strong support in helping me to get through the situation I'd fallen into," Chamberlain said.

Cebula was there for him during his run last year for City Council, he said, and the Cebulas (both are ministers) performed his wedding in April.

Chamberlain says through his strong faith, he believes that somebody can change as Cebula has done. He said Cebula offers hope for others who think they cannot.

"It doesn't matter what you go through in life, things can always change for the better," he said.

Cebula spent some time in the late 1980s speaking at different churches, and said he only found one person who disapproved of his past; any others did not express it to him.

"'Who are you to be pastor of a church after what you've done?'" he recalled her asking.

Cebula says he understands how she felt, but that he has come to peace with what happened, and the majority of folks have been accepting and understanding.

'I fit right in there'

After five years at the United Methodist Church, Cebula decided to form his own, the Church of the Living God, under the Foursquare Church denomination, in the building that is now the Cleghorn Neighborhood Center.

Cleghorn, he said, was the right fit at the time.

"I'm not saying everyone in Cleghorn is a convict — but there's poverty there, there's brokenness, and there's emptiness, and there's a lot of people there that know people that are in jail, a lot of kids whose fathers are in jail," Cebula said. "I fit right in there."

Over the course of the next 15 years, Cebula, along with his friends Esther and Peter Plastridge, then of Marlboro, welcomed the children of the neighborhood into their church for food, clothing and fun. They took the children out every Friday night for a plethora of activities, from visiting museums to singing Christmas carols to folks in nursing homes.

"One Saturday morning, a gentleman walked in with a gun with the intention of robbing him," Peter Plastridge, 67, said. "Phil led that gentleman to the Lord."

Ten years later, Cebula ran into that man and found he had become a minister himself, Peter Plastridge said.

The Plastridges say they've never once faulted Cebula for his past, and that forgiveness is key to Christianity and moving forward. If they had, they would not have had the experiences they've had together, such as ministering to the poor in Haiti, and they would not have the wonderful, unique friend they know, said Esther Plastridge, 71. He also officiated their daughter's wedding.

"We're all sinners, and we all have our issues," she said. "We all have hurt people dramatically in our lives. We can all get up from that point and have a life worth living. We are not prisoners of sin. Grace and mercy go before us."

When the Foursquare Church shut down the Church of the Living God, believing it could not be sustained with its small membership, Cebula chose to create an independent church, the Door of Hope Ministries. For the five years it was in operation, it moved around to several locations, including about a year and a half in the West Fitchburg home of Maria and Eduardo Aponte.

Maria Aponte, 53, said it simply seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and the Cebulas had always been so welcoming themselves.

"They always opened their own home, and tried to help other people," Aponte said. "They trust that God would always take care of them and lead them in life."

She said she was surprised to learn that such a humble, mild-mannered man had such a wild past, but that it was never a secret.

When Cebula retired about 2½ years ago, many folks told him he should write a book about his experiences and transformation. It wasn't until he was sitting in a church in Gardner that he heard a sermon that made up his mind.

The pastor spoke about how sad it would be for someone to live their whole life and never let their talents show, and to have those talents be buried with them.

"He said, 'there's somebody in this church right now who's supposed to write a book,'" Cebula said.

Over the last year and a half, Cebula wrote his memoir, "Twice Convicted: From Attica's Prison to a Pastor's Pulpit," covering from his early years to the time he found himself in Fitchburg.

Now that he's published it, he's focusing on participating in a new congregation, the Chair City Community Church in Gardner, enjoying his retirement and riding motorcycles with his wife. They say they're falling more and more in love each day.